It is a question that always crops up at this time of year. In the pubs before the match, on the concourses at half-time, during the walk home afterwards. “Are you renewing?” In the Premier League era, as Wolves prepare for their seventh successive season at this level - a feat not matched since those Seventies glory days - the answer should be a foregone conclusion. But this time it is not.
Season-ticket holders at all Premier League clubs are being pushed to the limit. Rising prices in a cost-of-living crisis play their part but even in the bad times, it once seemed, supporters always find a way. This is different. It is not just about the money. There is a more intangible problem. For many, going to the match - that joyous, despairing, spontaneous state - has become a more sterile experience. Tiresome, even. The hook: that ethereal quality that makes it all worthwhile - win, lose or draw - has receded and in its place is a more soulless mood. Checking offside. Checking handball. Checking foul play. Checking apathy.
Wolves have had a great season, all things considered. When their stellar head coach trounced off in a huff days before the start of the campaign, convinced he did not have a squad capable of competing, it appeared the writing was on the wall. Instead, Gary O’Neil got up from his sun lounger and answered the call to fill Julen Lopetegui’s boots. Gradually, at first, then thrillingly as autumn turned to winter, Wolves proved they could live with the elite and came tantalisingly close to mounting a European challenge before injuries took their toll on a squad bereft of depth.
Supporters are weary and it is nothing to do with what they have seen from their team. If anything, the reconnect after a troubled post-Nuno era has been strong. Players such as Mario Lemina, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Joao Gomes and Matheus Cunha have captured the hearts of those singing on the South Bank. Cunha, in particular, the £44million Brazilian who has become the talisman in attack.
VAR improves accuracy. The latest Premier League statistics show that before VAR was introduced 82 per cent of refereeing decisions were accurate. Since VAR, that figure has risen to 96 per cent. More correct line calls, more correct handball calls, more correct decisions.
The players’ tunnel is a fascinating place at the full-time whistle. Awash with testosterone and emotion at the best of times, the post-Bournemouth tunnel was full of rancour. Cunha wanted his say. He had just witnessed Hwang Hee Chan’s equaliser ruled out when referee Stuart Attwell was sent to the monitor by the VAR to overturn the goal because Cunha had caught Justin Kluivert with an outstretched arm in the build-up. The Bournemouth man had not appealed for a foul at the time. In fact, Kluivert had jostled Cunha from behind and initiated the first contact.
Cunha does not speak perfect English but for four minutes he tried his best, stepping forward and attempting to articulate why VAR has caused so much angst this season. Sapping the soul from the Molineux regulars, those who tread the same beaten path from their homes to the turnstiles year after year. Not just for Wolves fans but amongst the players, management and even in the boardroom.
“It’s not for today, maybe today they gave a good decision,” he said, in the aftermath of the 1-0 defeat. “The speed of the action is different on the pitch. Then you go to VAR and you see slow motion and maybe they change their mind. I spoke to the guy [Kluivert] and he didn’t understand why the referee went to VAR. It’s hard to lose a lot of points like this.”
Had it been a one-off, supporters may have taken it on the chin. But from the moment Andre Onana clattered into Sasa Kalajdzic in the final moments of the season’s opener at Old Trafford, VAR has dominated the landscape for Wolves.
Prior to Cunha’s errant arm, there was the disallowed Max Kilman header in added time against West Ham that appeared to tip O’Neil over the edge. “It’s a scandalous decision; terrible, horrendous,” the head coach said. “I can’t think of an explanation, it’s one of the worst decisions I’ve ever witnessed.” That was the watered down version for the media. Whatever he said to the match officials earned him a one match ban.
That goal was the perfect illustration of how VAR has muddied the thinking among match officials and how that extra layer of scrutiny has brought more discord. In a pre-VAR age, the assistant referee may have raised their flag, the referee blown for offside and we’d all have moved on. There would have been the usual post-match moaning but none of the bitter discord that followed after the VAR review at the monitor.
And here’s the crux, as Cunha articulated when he suggested that the correct outcome was not the issue. There was more than one VAR check during the Bournemouth match. Molineux reverberated to chants of “it’s not football any more” and “boring, boring” while supporters waited for assorted incidents to be probed, including a red card for Bournemouth’s Milos Kerkez.
Checking emotions. It’s the goals that are the real killer. Whether a supporter has paid a tenner to watch Darlaston Town or a hundred quid to watch Manchester United, there is no hierarchy when it comes to celebrating a goal. Visceral joy is the experience we live for more than any. VAR has shrouded that moment in doubt, keeping our emotions in check, systematically withdrawing that release.
VAR improves accuracy. 25,541 turned up for the Bournemouth match, a low-key, remains of the day midweek fixture. A small travelling following played its part but it was the only occasion Molineux has played host to a sub-30,000 crowd all season in the Premier League. Nothing to get concerned about just yet.
Attendances are never far from the minds of those in the boardroom, though. Apathy gets noticed. After the West Ham defeat, chairman Jeff Shi spoke for many Wolves supporters when he questioned how VAR – so distant and detached – is oozing into the fabric of the matchday.
“When a goal is scored and not one person inside the stadium questions the validity of that goal,” he said. “Including both sets of players, coaches, fans and even the match officials themselves, then it’s time to question whether someone remote disallowing that goal is really what football wants or needs.” Shi, like Cunha, was posing the rhetorical question: what do fans want from the match?
The 1994/95 campaign was one of the most enjoyable seasons of heartache I’ve ever had. A lad not long left the parental home, with a semblance of economic freedom, going home and away with mates. Wolves were in the middle of their second tier decade, but there was hope.
Graham Taylor’s side played a total of 61 fixtures in that madcap season, chucking everything at the league and three knockout competitions which included the ill-fated Anglian-Cup. It was the FA Cup that proved to be most memorable of that trio and it provided Wolves fans of an age with one of their greatest nights under the lights at Molineux. Premier League Sheffield Wednesday were knocked out on penalties in a fourth round replay. Trailing 3-0 at one stage, Wolves won the shootout 4-3 when Chris Waddle’s decisive spot-kick was saved. It was the England winger’s first penalty since his miss at the World Cup in Italy four years earlier.
Supporters’ ecstasy was replaced with agony three months later, in defeat at Burnden Park, when two goals from Bolton’s John McGinlay consigned Taylor’s men to a play-off semi-final defeat. Those there on the away terrace that rain-soaked night, and others watching back on the big screen at Molineux, still bear the scars from a truly rancid experience.
Had VAR been around, though, it would have been different. Those polar emotions would have been halted in their tracks. Goalkeeper Paul Jones had jumped off his line before Waddle’s penalty was struck, while McGinlay got away with a punch aimed at David Kelly which would have brought a red card long before the Scot’s decisive intervention in front of goal. Memories – exhilarating and painful in equal measure – that have lasted almost 30 years, wiped before they could leave a mark.
VAR improves accuracy. In doing so it removes the moment. Those unique, priceless few seconds when all is won or lost.
Attempts will be made to make the process more palatable. Semi-automated offsides, referees explaining their decision making. Some will welcome this. The ideological divide between those whose priority is getting things right, as opposed to others who despair at this numbing of the senses, is a stark one.
“Are you renewing?” For some it is the habit that will never be kicked. Renewing season tickets year after year; love and loyalty for the club. That narrative has changed for others. In the pubs and on the concourses. On the walk home. Wolves fans will always love their club. All fans love their club. But a love of the game? Maybe that is just starting to ebb. The conversations are different. It would be a great pity if the clinical, sterile nit-picking and re-refereeing of football matches eventually erodes the love. What will be left behind? Check complete.
I completely agree Johnny. The issue with VAR is not technical accuracy or bias. VAR is not corrupt, as the South Bank conspiracy theorists would have you believe, and perhaps the worst element of this current climate is the forced alliance it appears to be creating with Nottingham Forest, complete with their owner who really does need to be kept at arms length. These moments you reference are the nuts and bolts issue. Aside from these Wolves specific ones that live long in my memory (just reading the name McGinlay has raised my blood pressure) on the macro global level of world football with VAR you don't have so many of the most iconic moments in the sports history. You don't have Hand of God, you don't have the Geoff Hurst Hattrick, you don't have the Thierry Henry Hand Ball and you don't have "Do I not like that". I don't even have to mention the matches these moments occurred in - they are part of the fabric of the game. The luck of a good subjective decision and the injustice of a bad factual one are fundamental to the enjoyment of the sport. Football is the world game because of its simplicity, imperfections and all. I never thought I'd be in the position of not celebrating last minute equalisers because there's no way to be sure for at least the next 30 seconds whether its going to be ruled offside 100 miles away by virtue of a still motion picture taken at an approximate point in which the ball was as best judged to have moved forward by a 25 frames a second camera. Ultimately I don't want football to be perfect. I want it once again to be the sport that has provided me with countless hours of in the moment unbridled joy and crushing heartache. There's no substitute for that.
The only downside to VAR is sometimes (feels like often) long wait for confirm a goal/ offside/ penalty. The automation will come and that will improve. Dreading past when the players could get away with scoring with hand, silly diving and other stuff.